Author Archive

The Home Food Challenge

Now that big political dramas are settled and we can all move on it’s time to get back to business. Here at EFL we have a monthly challenge each month, and since fall is a great time to focus on serious body fat reduction our November challenge involves tracking how many meals one prepares at home. And as we head into winter and the holiday season it becomes even more important to build good nutritional habits. The reasons why this ...

Bigger Smaller Bigger

A couple of months ago Nate Green and I met up for beers up the street from EFL, and over some delicious Hopworks organic ale he told me about a book he was working on that had him glued to his laptop for the better part of every day. No wonder he was looking a little paler than one would expect in summer, even in Portland. The premise of his book, “Bigger Smaller Bigger” is a self experiment on ...

Feather Ruffling

It never fails. Every time I attend a workshop or conference I come away with the realization that I didn’t really know what I thought I knew. That things I thought should work for correcting an issue, or making someone stronger probably wasn’t optimal.

Am I not as an effective trainer as I thought I was?

It is for these reasons the vast majority of trainers never attend conferences such as Perform Better Summit. The city I live in probably has more ...

All You Need to Know About Fitness is

Writing blog posts these days, with Facebook and Twitter being the default method of mass communication, feels a bit like sending a telegram. With my schedule of training people and running a business time is at a premium. And not to get off on a tangent but in my spare time I’m working on an equation that demonstrates the amount of time a fitness pro spends posting on Facebook about their awesome blog posts and articles is inversely proportional to ...

Shifting Perspectives

Have you ever had an experience where someone or something causes you to suddenly realize that what you thought was normal might not be at all? There is no question that we all get a bit too comfortable in our habits from time to time, especially when not exposed to other ideas. Often our greatest periods of personal growth and productivity are when we face a challenge, or have a shift in perspective.

The New Rules of Lifting for Life

Every couple of years I get a second Christmas when the latest in the series of New Rules of Lifting books arrives. This year is even a bit more special because Lou & Alwyn’s latest book, The New Rules of Lifting for Life, addresses a population that makes up the bulk of my clientele. As Lou puts it NROL4L is for “Men and Women who want to ace their midlife exams.”

Chunk Your Way to A Better Body

It’s probably because juggling multiple thoughts and actions is stressful, and likely means we’ll do a poorer job. Yeah yeah… try telling that to your boss I know. But it’s a fact. Recent books on efficiency that I’ve seen all seem to touch on the subject of setting aside chunks of time to do only e-mail, then a time for filling out the TPS reports, of whatever it might be. ...

Jiro Dreams of Fitness

This past weekend my wife and I hit a local theater to see “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”, a documentary film about one of the most highly regarded sushi chefs in the world, who just happens to be 85 years young and the first sushi chef to receive the Michelin Guide’s 3 star rank. We went in the film expecting to be wowed by footage of fantastic food but came away with so much more. Foodies and sushi fans will obviously ...

Eating Your Way Into Health

Anytime one does something long enough patterns develop. Over the years I’ve helped hundreds of people to lose fat. To be sure there have been some that haven’t succeeded, and in that time I’ve come to distinguish a few patterns among them.

1. Those that “get it” pretty quickly and start to immediately adjust their eating and lifestyle habits.

2. Those that take some time, perhaps 3-9 months, before it sinks in that changes in eating and exercise are not temporary, but ...

Working Out is a Waste of Time

Yep, working out is a waste of time. However practicing, or simply “doing” exercise is quite fun, and in my opinion one of the best things you can do for yourself.

What is the difference?

Americans it seems believe it is our God given right to believe that if a little is good then more is better. Obviously that has paid off when it comes to the waist line wars – we have the biggest! But if you are reading this in ...